


A Host of Shadows

by Anefi



Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [10]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Humor, Minor Character Death Mention, Psychological Horror, Spooky, Transform or Treat, Transform or Treat 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27252916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: “Humans are afraid of everything," Knock Out said. "The familiar, theunfamiliar, all kinds of bizarre invented monsters, other humans,deadhumans, alien invasion—well, maybe that last one isn’t so irrational.” He and Starscream smirked at each other.Watching from the bridge, Soundwave’s visor flickered.
Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918825
Comments: 25
Kudos: 85





	A Host of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> A Transform or Treat gift for 5amanthus! Happy Halloween! :D
> 
> Big thanks to [slyboots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slyboots) and the soundwave discord for help workshopping :)

The _Nemesis_ lurked in Earth’s lower atmosphere. Outside the ship, the night was dark, cold and clear, and the lone moon hung full and red in a sky crossed with satellites. Soundwave was the only officer on the bridge for epsilon shift, as usual.

As he preferred it.

The sounds of the command ship were as familiar to him as his own chassis: the deep thrum of the engines and antigrav, the creak of temperature differentials in the hull, the low buzz of communications with half the ship in recharge or off-duty. Vehicons crawled through the decks like insectoid drones in service to a vast, silent queen. The two standing the shift with him were performing their duties with acceptable efficiency, so he allowed their casual game of simulated infiltration, downloaded from the human internet and played in their HUDs, to continue without comment. Monitoring security feeds through the thick data cable linking his processor directly to the communications terminal took only a small fraction of his own capacity; the rest was turned to sifting through intelligence reports and planetside broadcasts. At least it was, until one of his continuous background processes flagged an incident for his attention.

“—oundwave to cover my shift just to waste my precious hours off-duty. I really don’t understand your affection for human entertainment productions. What do you see in these… ‘horrible’ movies?”

“ _Horror_ movies, Starscream,” Knock Out pouted. “They’re fun! Don’t you remember fun?”

Knock Out and Starscream ambled down the hallway toward the officers’ mess, sleek red and sharp silver lines standing out against the dark bulkheads even in low light. It was easy for the network of microphones woven through the ship to pick up Starscream’s strident complaints.

“Are they supposed to be frightening? Breakdown fell asleep.”

“He usually does,” Knock Out admitted.

“What _is_ the appeal? Do you just enjoy listening to humans scream?”

“Well. That might be a bonus.” They turned a corner; a Vehicon saw them coming and scurried the other way. “Humans are afraid of everything! The familiar, the _un_ familiar, all kinds of bizarre invented monsters, other humans, _dead_ humans, alien invasion—well, maybe that last one isn’t so irrational.” He and Starscream smirked at each other.

Watching from the bridge, Soundwave’s visor flickered. Unnaturally slowly, his helm tilted a few degrees to the right.

Starscream claimed his usual seat in the mess and scrolled through his inbox while Knock Out retrieved two cubes of energon. He looked up when he finished deleting all his unread messages and the expected cube had failed to appear at his elbow. “What’s taking so long?”

Knock Out was jabbing at the dispenser with a sharp talon, his back turned. “There seems to be a malfunction,” he said, his mild tone at odds with his increasing frequency and force. The last operational dispenser was at the end of a dark row of deactivated or removed machinery, a remnant of a time when the _Nemesis_ was host to dozens of officers on rotating shifts. The paltry remainders of Decepticon high command rattled around in the old ship like bolts in a can.

With a sigh, Starscream stood. It was humiliating, being reduced to doing everything himself. “Let me see. Sometimes the mechanism jams.”

“I _know_.” Knock Out pursed his lips and thumped the side of the dispenser _almost_ hard enough to scuff his finish. “You see? It’s—eugh.”

Instead of a healthy blue stream of fresh energon, the nozzle oozed a thick, rusted paste. Starscream’s face twisted in disgust. “That is revolting.”

“The last time I saw pus that color—well, the patient was never going to survive, but we couldn’t even resell the parts.”

“Charming.” Starscream opened a comm line to maintenance. “Get someone to the officers’ lounge to repair the energon dispenser. _Immediately_.”

In response, there was only a quiet, sibilant hiss, like the cosmic radiation from hard, white stars.

“This is Commander Starscream. Acknowledge.”

Nothing. He frowned.

“Starscream to the bridge. Come in, Soundwave.”

“—Soundwave reporting,” he returned, in Starscream’s own voice, modulated just slightly to enhance discordant harmonics. He and Knock Out both shuddered.

“I _hate_ when he does that,” Knock Out muttered. Starscream cut a hand at him waspishly

“Yes. Good. Soundwave. Is there an issue with the comms? I just tried to contact maintenance for the energon dispenser in the officers’ mess, and there was no response.”

“Systems nominal,” Soundwave sent, a clip of some dry, supercilious, long-dead Senate functionary. “I will dispatch—a Vehicon.” Blast Off’s haughty accent – Starscream hadn’t thought about _him_ in an age – and Hexchange. Another corpse.

“Very good, thank you.” He quickly cut the line. “He’s in a mood,” Starscream said, barely audible, with a dark look toward the nearest security camera.

Knock Out tapped his chin with a pointed claw and pretended to consider. “Does he have moods?”

“You’ll learn,” Starscream said ominously. He shot one more disdainful look at the broken dispenser and thought of the open bottle of fine high-grade he had hidden in his room, too good to share. He started walking toward the door. “Well. I believe that I will retire to my quarters for the rest of the shift. Thank you, Knock Out, for the entertainment.”

“Of course,” Knock Out said, smoothly covering any disappointment at being dismissed.

They walked together to the door, where they were awkwardly trapped for a slight but noticeable delay. Starscream reset his vocalizer. “The maintenance on this ship has really—” the mechanism slid open noiselessly just as he reached for the panel. “There we go. After you.”

Knock Out sauntered out into the corridor. Starscream took one step to follow—and stopped, warning sensors prickling. It took a moment to identify why. The background hum of the ship had accompanied his every waking moment for long vorns, and had long ago been automatically filtered from his conscious perception. But, something about it had—changed. He carefully isolated and compared the frequency to a stored memory from prior cycles; yes, there it was. A discrepancy.

Ahead of him, Knock Out slowed. “Starscream?” As a new arrival to the _Nemesis_ , he wasn’t as familiar with its rhythms. Or he might have been just too self-absorbed.

Starscream called the bridge again. “Soundwave, I’m detecting an aberration in the main engine harmonics. Run a diagnostic.”

A beep of acknowledgement. A slight delay. “Systems nominal,” Soundwave sent; the same clip as before.

Starscream knew better than to question him. Yet, the creeping sense of dissonance felt like an icy hand reaching for his dorsal strut. “Are you sure?” His voice was smaller than he’d intended. Knock Out shot him a sharp look.

“Systems nominal.”

The lights flickered.

“Soundwave!” Starscream reset his vocalizer after it escalated to an embarrassing shriek. “Ahem. Knock Out and I have witnessed _several_ malfunctions in the last—”

“Systems nominal.”

He frowned. “I really don’t think—”

“Systems nominal. Systemsnominal. S—syss—ssyttemeemens nnon—”

The comm dissolved into static.

Starscream and Knock Out exchanged a look.

“That certainly doesn’t sound nominal.”

“No,” Starscream said. Then, lower, “Maybe he’s finally glitched.” Really, it was a miracle that any of them had survived so long with their core functions mostly intact. Primus knew Megatron hadn’t.

“Should we… go… check on him?” Knock Out sounded like he sincerely hoped the answer was no.

“There’s a console in the next section. We can call up the bridge security monitors and a hardline comm.”

A door behind them slammed open and shut like a guillotine. Starscream’s null rays came online with a whine as he whipped around, targeting; Knock Out fumbled with his shock stick.

Nothing moved. It was silent for long astrosecond, other than the discordant thrum of the engine.

Starscream deliberately forced his battle protocols to stand down. “There must be some sort of—the maintenance issue is more widespread than we thought. Scraplets in the circuitry. Something like that.” Scraplets were a serious problem. That’s why he was so tense.

Knock Out forced a laugh. “Do you know what these malfunctions remind me of? The humans have a whole subgenre of horror movies about places being haunted.”

Starscream had the passing thought that he could solve at least one problem by shooting Knock Out. Not lethally. Just a little bit. “Horror movies aren’t real. _Scraplets_ are.”

“Well, the movies aren’t. But what if they’re documenting a real phenomenon? Something endemic to Earth?”

“Next you’ll tell me you believe in the persistent electronic echoes of sparks returned to the Well.”

“Data ghosts? No.” He hesitated. “Although, come to think of it, reports are so widespread—.”

Starscream scoffed. “Come on, Knock Out. Let’s find the console, alert the bridge, and let the Vehicons take care of these nuisance glitches.”

The click of his thruster heels in the hallway seemed to echo differently. Was the discordant note in the engine sound getting further out of sync? He glanced back at Knock Out, who had fallen in behind him.

Out of the corner of his optic, he saw a dark shape winging through the air, small thrusters at maximum. The Decepticon transponder pinged before Starscream’s battle protocols snapped fully back online. 

“Laserbeak! Report,” he ordered. “Communicators are down in this section, and Soundwave’s last transmission was—”

Laserbeak sailed past overhead without slowing, listing slightly to the left. Starscream and Knock Out watched in dismay as Soundwave’s deployer wobbled down the corridor, dropping a few feet as thrusters coughed, almost crashing into the wall. In the direction of the engine room.

“That’s not a comms issue,” Knock Out said. Starscream didn’t dignify that observation with an answer.

“Let’s check that console.”

The terminal and screen transformed out of the wall with an unhealthy grinding noise in the mechanism, but a few keystrokes called up the main camera feed for the bridge. A dark, angular shadow, Soundwave was tethered to his usual station by a pulsing primary cable, surrounded by empty terminals. Unmoving, to all appearances unbothered; the only thing out of the ordinary was Laserbeak’s empty perch on Soundwave’s chest. Soundwave’s impassive visor slowly turned toward the camera.

Starscream scowled as he opened the audio line from the console to the bridge. “Soundwave, what’s happening? We just saw Laserbeak flying toward the engine room, and—”

The image flickered.

When it returned, Soundwave hadn’t moved, but the scene around him changed. Instead of the silent, lifeless bridge, a dozen colorful mechs with shining purple badges talked and laughed and manned the other stations. It was impossible. Starscream recognized Strika and Lugnut, executed by the Galactic Council a millennium ago, sneaking glances across the bridge from their posts at security and tactical. That surly pilot, Crankcase, at the navigation console; dependable Long Haul on logistics. Two sets of wings, in blue and purple, facing away from the camera. The dark blue seeker started to turn.

Starscream staggered back, vents gasping for air, processor flooded with deep-buried memories fighting to surface. His spark burned in his chest like his core had lost containment, or turned to lead.

Knock Out was saying something. Knock Out? “Commander Starscream,” he repeated, reaching for his shoulder. “Are you—”

Starscream shoved him away. “Fine, I’m _fine_ ,” he snapped. Emergency power had been routed to his cooling system, emergency repression protocols activated to beat back the flood of the past. “A—a momentary—a trick of the processor.” He forced his head to turn, to focus his optics on the visual feed one more time.

Soundwave, standing impassively, and a fidgeting Vehicon behind him. That was it. Of course.

Knock Out hesitantly started to reach out again, but stopped. He glanced at the innocuous feed. “Could it be a virus?”

“If the _Autobots_ have found a way through Soundwave’s firewalls, we might as well surrender now. No, it’s—scraplets. It has to be. This ship is ancient. Decrepit. Some—crossed circuit brought up old footage.”

“Another point for _haunted_ ,” Knock Out said, low enough that Starscream could pretend he hadn’t heard.

A speaker in the wall clicked on. An indistinct murmur of voices dripped out, overlapping, unhurried, like the background noise of a crowded room. Metal clanked on metal, the casual contact of bodies accustomed to crowding, flat in the empty hall. Someone laughed. Flamewar? Dead for—it didn’t matter.

“I’m going to the bridge,” Starscream bit out. With a leap into the air, he transformed, lit his thrusters, and jetted down the corridor.

“Wait for me!” Knock Out yelped. “You can’t leave attractive people _alone_ in a horror movie!” The roar of his engine soon fell behind.

When Starscream burst onto the bridge and flipped out of alt mode, he was ready to tear off someone’s plating. It brought him up short when the room was empty. Abandoned terminals hummed in standby, the ship running on automatic processes. Looking around suspiciously, he activated the nearest console and started flicking through security feeds. A Vehicon was dismantling the energon dispenser in the officers’ mess; another was walking up behind Knock Out. Soundwave was in engineering, staring into the virulent, pulsing green spark of the ship’s core, a cable snaking from his frame to burrow into the systems. On his shoulder, Laserbeak turned toward the camera, colors washed black in acid light.

Starscream reset his vocalizer. He opened a comm line. “Soundwave,” he said.

“I’m detecting an aberration in the main engine harmonics,” Soundwave said, in almost Starscream’s voice.

Starscream shuddered. “Yes. Well. I—I thought so,” he said. “See that it’s repaired.” A flash of shadow out of the corner of his optic; he didn’t look. The room was empty. His threat assessment was stuck on high alert for no reason. He clenched his hands into sharp fists and pretended they weren’t shaking.

The husk of the Decepticon flagship drifted on through the alien night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [decepticon-propaganda](https://decepticon-propaganda.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


End file.
